Musikkindergarten

Opening hours

• Monday – Friday
• 7 a.m. – 5 p.m.

Job vacancies

We are always looking for new talents and support for our teams. You are welcome to send us an unsolicited application.

Registration

We currently have places to offer. To register, please fill out the PDF form and send it to us either by e-mail or post.

»With music you can overcome borders. If we provide this experience to our children, they will be carried by it for a lifetime.«

Kent Nagano, patron of the music kindergarten, Hamburg general music director and chief conductor of the Hamburg Philharmonic State Orchestra

Childcare provision

We offer three crèche groups and three elementary groups for children aged between 1 and 6 years. We work according to the semi-open concept.

Children with disabilities are accepted in terms of integration assistance; 5 places have been reserved for this purpose to date.

All children new to the daycare centre are acclimatised according to evaluated acclimatisation models for daycare centres.

We are not a private kindergarten. The costs are covered proportionately by the Hamburg Ministry of Labour, Social Affairs, Family and Integration (BASFI) and by the parents. The amount of the parents’ contribution depends on income (day-care voucher principle).

Our educational work is based on the Hamburg educational guidelines and framework agreements of the City of Hamburg with regard to quality. It encompasses all areas from movement and communication to the perception of the social and cultural environment to initial scientific experiences, artistic design and, of course, music.

The children spend the day both in their reference group and in open group life with the other children at the centre. This allows each child to orientate, try out and develop at their own pace and according to their individual abilities. The caregiver provides both support and encouragement to try new things; based on observations, appropriate documentation and dialogue with the parents, each child can be supported individually.

Every fortnight, instrumentalists or singers from the Hamburg State Opera come to visit to bring music from different eras to life for the children: the children listen to the sounds of the various orchestral instruments and are delighted when they are allowed to try out the instruments for themselves. In addition, the intensive experiences with the artists are also developed further in everyday life – children and educational staff make music together on the daycare centre’s own and homemade instruments, sing, experiment with sounds and prepare small performances. Instruments are available to the children at all times so that they can give the initial impulse to make music themselves.

Educational offer

At the music kindergarten, we give the children a wide range of access to music. Music is integrated into the children’s everyday lives and they playfully discover their own musical world: singing, dancing, making music, researching and creatively.

Our work is based on the Hamburg educational guidelines and covers all areas of education. Other educational activities include

• Participation in the Bridge Year
• The children’s development is monitored and documented in the form of educational and learning stories.
• Psychomotor skills
• Regular excursions and projects
• Annual art exhibition for all children and parents with works by the children

History

The Musikkindergarten Hamburg was founded in 2010 as the 24th institution of the Kindergärten Finkenau Foundation. Classical music presenter Maria Willer initiated the kindergarten modelled on the Berlin music kindergarten founded by Daniel Barenboim and, together with the Finkenau Kindergartens Foundation, launched the cooperation with Simone Young, the State Opera and the Philharmonic State Orchestra Hamburg.

Our team consists of educational specialists. Some educators have further specialised knowledge, e.g. in music education, social pedagogy, curative education, intercultural pedagogy or psychomotor skills. All team members contribute their musicality and musical experience to their work with the children.

Housekeepers and cleaners are also an integral part of the team. We are also particularly keen to provide qualified guidance for interns. We also receive support from volunteers and federal volunteers.

Regular staff meetings are held to discuss cases and pedagogical topics as well as conceptual and organisational matters. The documentation and observation of the child’s development by the employees is an essential part of the work.

Regular further training enables staff to scrutinise and review their own work and to obtain the latest findings from the fields of education and developmental psychology. All employees are obliged to attend a training course at least once a year.

Anne Murawski is available to you as head of pedagogy and admissions. Kai Schnabel is responsible for musical matters.

Spatial layout

• Facility is located in the centre of the renovated Schanzen courtyards
• Various function rooms on two levels
• The centrepiece is a spacious, light-flooded hall with a gallery
• Special feature is the music room, which connects the hall and the elementary area and offers children a view through the windows
• Spacious corridor
• There are floor-to-ceiling windows throughout the building
• Each nursery group has its own group bedroom and washroom
• The elementary area has a very open architectural design
• Various functional areas for plenty of freedom of movement and space to play
• Outdoor area

Cooperation with parents

• Annual parent survey
• Parents’ council
• Conversations at drop-off and pick-up time
• Parents’ evenings
• Parent-child afternoons
• Complaints management
• Annual development talks
• Support offered by internal counselling team
• Singing circles with parents

We need and want co-operation with parents. 
That’s why we organise parent-teacher conferences, parents’ evenings and exchanges with the teaching staff in between.
We also look forward to celebrating festivals together with parents and children in order to strengthen this co-operation.

Education through music

Music pervades the children’s daily activities and is a part of their routines. Unlike in other day-care centres, it is not an element that shows up just sporadically. Singing takes place in the groups three times a week. On every first and third Wednesday of the month, all the children and the entire day-care team sing together; parents are invited to join this open singing group, too. In addition, the music is made tangible – live and up close – through the regular contact with professional musicians. When musicians from the Philharmonic State Orchestra Hamburg and singers from the Hamburg State Opera Choir come to visit, which occurs every two weeks, the children get a taste of the world of music at large. The musicians are greeted by approx. 20 children at morning circle; only afterwards do the musicians present their instruments to all the day-care children in the large entrance hall. In this intimate setting an in-depth exchange can take place – the instrument can be investigated in detail, with shyer children, too, getting the opportunity to do so. The groups take turns, they deal with the instrument of their choice even before the visit and digest the experience later. The respective instructor actively accompanies the process. In everyday life, the children discover their own musical world with our carefully selected team: through singing, dancing and making music with an inquisitive and creative spirit.

The playful discovery of music is our priority. The children do not receive any singing or instrument lessons in the conventional sense. We want to use music as a messenger for education and emotional development of children on many levels: listening and performing promotes language development; rhythm and movement trains motor coordination and perception of space/time processes; experiences with sound and acoustics guide towards the natural sciences; making music together promotes awareness in contact with others and increases social competence – it also includes first experiences with numbers and structures.

Conceptually, the Hamburg music kindergarten takes inspiration from an initiative by the conductor Daniel Barenboim. The Berlin music kindergarten has been working in cooperation with the Berlin State Orchestra and the State Opera Unter den Linden since 2005.

State Opera Hamburg

With a tradition spanning over 300 years, the Hamburg State Opera is one of the leading opera houses in Europe. Since 2010, Hamburg’s general music director – since 2015 Kent Nagano, previously Simone Young – have taken on the patronage of the Hamburg music kindergarten with great verve. Members of the State Opera ensemble and choir share their joy in music with the children by regularly visiting the Hamburg music kindergarten. Under the banner “young”, the Hamburg State Opera, the Hamburg Philharmonic State Orchestra and the Hamburg Ballet John Neumeier present their specialised offer to children and young people.

Philharmonic State Orchestra Hamburg

The Philharmonic State Orchestra has been defining the sound of the Hanseatic city for almost 200 years. The musicians are passionately committed to young people and the promotion of young musical talent. An important component was added to its intensive education work in 2010 by launching the cooperation with the Hamburg music kindergarten. Since the beginning of the 2016/17 season, the collaboration with the Hamburg State Opera and the Philharmonic State Orchestra has further intensified and solidified. The visits of the orchestra and choir members are planned for a year in advance and now take place regularly every two weeks. And there are return visits, too: children from the music kindergarten are allowed to take part in rehearsals at the opera in groups.

Academy for Music and Theatre in Hamburg (Hochschule für Musik und Theater – HfMT)

Since 2012 the Academy of Music and Theatre (HfMT) has also been one of the Hamburg music kindergarten’s cooperation partners. The cooperation project so far consists of a course on perception/communication/learning and teaching in the winter semester. In their seminar, students of instruments develop project units in which they actively play music with the children and make classical works accessible to them. The students work on music with the children at the music kindergarten from a wide variety of epochs, styles and instrumentations and accompany the children imaginatively in their musical experience of instruments, melodies, rhythms and sounds.

National Youth Ballet

The National Youth Ballet is a company consisting of eight young dancers under the artistic directorship of John Neumeier. As a company without its own stage, the dancers are always looking for new venues to perform at hospitals, retirement homes and prisons, but also at theatres and festivals. The dedicated members of the National Youth Ballet visit the music kindergarten twice a year and inspire the children with their choreographies – participation is explicitly encouraged and the children greatly enjoy the movements.

Hamburg Conservatory and Zukunftsmusik Hamburg e.V. (translated as Future Music Hamburg registered association)

As part of the “Kultur macht stark” (“Culture makes people strong”) programme launched by the Federal Ministry of Education and Research, we established a cooperation in 2019 with the Hamburg Conservatory and the association Verein Zukunftsmusik Hamburg e.V. Two music instructors come to visit us every two weeks, who take approx. 15 children from the kindergarten section (3–6 years) along on imaginary journeys as they sing. During the 45-minute visits, the children are guided in a playful and professional manner to explore their own voices in melodies and sounds and be completely themselves and relaxed while doing so. The music kindergarten thanks them for their dedication!

Bartholomay Stiftung

Lulu und Robert Bartholomay Stiftung supports our work with repeated financial donations, which we have in the past used to purchase chairs for concerts and a beautiful harp. At the end of 2012, Father Christmas brought us yet another gift that we used to buy a wonderful sound cradle. We were generously gifted for our work in 2016 as well and were able to build our own playhouse.

Bullerei restaurant

The Bullerei hotspot run by Tim Mälzer and Patrick Rüther supported our two concerts with great feasting and plenty of neighbourly goodwill. We staged a children’s programme at the Bullerei’s fifth anniversary in July 2014 to let our wonderful neighbours know how much we appreciate them.

Café Elbgold

The Elbgold café is in our immediate vicinity in the Schanze and provides delicious coffee to the musicians who come to visit us every week. It also takes care of the catering for selected events on our premises.

Deutsche Orchester-Stiftung (German Orchestra Foundation)

Deutsche Orchester-Stiftung helps us to buy instruments for the music kindergarten with its donation.

Hamburg’s wholesale meat market

The meat wholesale market enabled the purchase of designer concert chairs for the charity opening concert with a generous donation.

Gärtner Möbel furniture store

Gärtner Möbel enabled us to buy Eames chairs for our concerts by giving us heavily subsidised purchase prices.

Hamburger Sparkasse bank

The Hamburger Sparkasse supported the Hamburg music kindergarten with a substantial injection of capital. The money was used to build a soundproof music room.

Haspa Musik Stiftung (Haspa Music Foundation)

Haspa Musik Stiftung is helping the Hamburg music kindergarten with a very special donation: in future we will be able to use an elegant, high-quality Yamaha piano free of charge.

Iris von Hänisch

Ms von Hänisch is a board member of “Yehudi Menuhin Live Music Now Hamburg e.V.” Iris von Hänisch, who worked as a music instructor for many years, has made her extensive and valuable collection of instruments available to the Hamburg music kindergarten. The generous contributor consistently surprises us with other gifts and financial donations, for which we are highly appreciative.

Jovita Stiftung Hamburg

We are indebted to the Hamburg children’s and youth foundation Jovita Stiftung for its funding of a sound wall by Ferdinand Försch. The musician presented us with the drum wall in the presence of managing director Elke Fischer at the end of March 2016. We are over the moon – and the children now drum like champions.

Peter-Mählmann-Stiftung

Peter-Mählmann-Stiftung, which belongs to the Haspa bank, donated a generous sum to the music kindergarten for an educational book project in which musical immersion and experiences related to it are portrayed in a way suitable for practical application.

Ratsherrn Brauerei (brewery)

Our neighbour, the brewery Ratsherrn Brauerei, ensured that the guests we invited were supplied with sparkling soft drinks during the two concerts.

Donation and sponsorship queries

Johanna Kühne is happy to assist you if you would like to learn about possibilities of supporting our project and even incorporating it in your public relations work in a meaningful and useful way.

Contact for sponsors and press

presse@finkenau.de